'Twas the Night Before Christmas, Huey "Piano" Smith and the Clowns (Westside)

This seminal 1962 album on Ace Records is a serious party-down album of the Christmas variety; you can tell just by listening to their version of "Silent Night," on which most acts do too reverent a job. Ironically, this collector's item stacked up in warehouses on its initial issue in 1962, according to the liner notes, because of the inept distributorship of Vee-Jay Records, a firm that would later go on to fumble its brief ownership of The Beatles. But let's talk about Huey and the Clowns, who grafted bits of their earlier hits onto their holiday performances to ramp up the excitement level. Sounds cheesy, but modern acts might want to trot out that technique once in a while; it's at least good for laughs. The CD reissue includes instrumental-only versions of the tunes, so you can get down all year round! UPDATE: In the course of analyzing the track list for Ace Records' A Rock 'n Roll Christmas, which is an alternate version of this album with additional songs by other artists, Brian Zimmerman discovered there were a fair number of guest artists on this album. The Heartbeats join the Clowns on "Jingle Bells" and "Almost Time for Santa," Jessie Thomas is on "Silent Night," "Doing the Santa Claus," "Twas the Night Before Christmas" and "All I Want for Christmas," and Bubba Anderson is on "Rock 'n Roll Santa Claus." Long out of print, Westside Records reissued the album on CD several years ago, and that too is no longer available.

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